A commonly known printing assembly comprises a carriage supporting a print head.
The print head is configured to expel droplets of a recording substance, such as ink, on a recording medium. The expelled droplets form image dots on the recording medium.
Image-wise positioning of the dots results in an image. For image-wise positioning, the carriage is moveable in a carriage plane, which carriage plane is substantially parallel to a medium support surface, the recording medium being supported on such medium support surface. The print head is controlled to expel a droplet at each position where an image dot is needed to form the image.
In a known printing assembly, the carriage is moved along a gantry in a scanning direction and the gantry is configured to be moveable in a transport direction, the transport direction being substantially perpendicular to the scanning direction. Thus, the print head may be positioned in two direction, enabling to position the image dots in a two-dimensional array.
For a high image quality, it is required that image dots are positioned as accurate as possible. For high productivity, it is required that the carriage moves at a high speed and is able to quickly decelerate and accelerate. Other specific requirements can be imposed on the carriage and its support structure depending on the requirements and applications of the printing assembly. In any case, the functional requirements imposed on the carriage require a suitable design of the carriage and gantry.